


Made Raw

by rustywrites



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Experimental, Getting Together, M/M, Romance, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 15:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rustywrites/pseuds/rustywrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe they balance each other out.</p><p>Maybe it's polarity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made Raw

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in part by Richard Siken's beautiful quote.
> 
> “You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.” 
> 
> I wanted to write something pretty and prose-y about things that were tarnished and beautiful so I linked up a few drabbles I had been putzing around with. 
> 
> This is more of a poem than it is a fic.
> 
> I'm on tumblr here: http://rustypolished.tumblr.com

When things in Stiles' life break, he fights it. He fights accepting it, he fights every part of it, he doesn't resign himself to anything. He fills up every space he's in with words and exaggeration and he's trained himself expertly over the years to turn that anger, sadness, into energy. 

It's a luxury Derek doesn't have. His own anger burned to hot and too bright and scorched him from the inside out. 

Things break all the time but it's much harder to notice, or to care, when you never stop moving and Stiles has never done anything but hit the ground running.

Derek stopped moving years ago; anchored himself when he realized the storm was never going to pass. 

He's resigned to it. It's not that he's a pessimist (he is), he's a realist (he isn't). Realism is truth. It's less anger and more hopelessness. But words like 'hopelessness' weigh heavy on the tongue and get caught up in throats like tar. Anger is quick and bright and easy. 

Stiles is a being comprised entirely of hope. It's bitter and it's endless and it's full of lighter fluid but it's hope all the same. Sometimes it catches fire and blazes so brightly it makes Derek's hackles rise just to be in the same room as him, has to fight feeling drawn to him, feeling magnetized by the spark of him. 

Maybe they balance each other out.

Maybe it's polarity. 

–

Things in Derek's life rarely happen the way he wants them to. So rarely, in fact, that somewhere along the line he'd given up expectations entirely. Expectations are the prerequisite for most horrible things, he's realized. Expectations were unwelcome. 

When Stiles kisses him for the first time (it's clumsy and not at all romantic, a hurried peck to the corner of his mouth before he ducks away, ears red, mumbling about needing to get home), Derek does not allow himself to expect more. 

He doesn't try to stop him. 

But. 

It's the first time in years (since smoke and ash and bisected bodies in the woods) that he's had to struggle with the idea. 

It's the first time in years he's wanted.

He begins (slowly) allowing himself to look. Stiles practically makes a game of avoiding him after that, never more than ten feet from Scott or Lydia or Allison every time they might be in a room with one another. Derek sees the way Scott's eyes narrow (more than usual) at him every time he thinks Derek might be looking his way. He sees the visible distain on Lydia's face. He sees the far away look in Stiles' eyes, even when he's trying to smile and play act like nothing ever happened. 

Derek tolerates it right up to the point until he doesn't; wearing his aloof disinterest like a well tailored suit for as long as he can stand it. The thing is, now that he's started, he can't seem to stop. The wanting comes in waves and he hasn't dreamt like this, about this, since he was a teenager (since Kate, no no no, not her, never her) and he feels equally alive and blown off course with it. 

This is not the path his life was supposed to take. He was not supposed to start seeing the careful, meticulous ways Stiles' hands would flick across parchment with the curves of runes as he practices drawing them out of Deaton's books, much less start to find them beautiful. He was not supposed to watch the pink lines of his lips form words in latin and remember what they felt like against his. 

He was not supposed to hope for more.

–

It takes a whole two weeks for either of them to get up the nerve to be alone in a room together. 

–

Things in Derek's life are defined by ruin, by ghosts and regret and misplaced responsibility. But Stiles is all reckless bravery and laughter, dangerous but bright. There's ruin in him too, Derek's not naive enough to pretend it's not there but he thinks that maybe some ruin can be beautiful. Thinks that Stiles is beautiful. 

“You're an asshole,” Stiles laughs, in between kisses and breaths, and for a split second Derek fights the urge to roll his eyes before he realizes they're closed. “You're an asshole and I thought you didn't want me. You never came after me.” 

And it's Derek's turn to laugh, then, because it makes so much sense for Stiles to craft some kind of silver screen romantic fantasy for them, to expect Derek to come running after him in the rain. 

“You didn't give me much opportunity to,” he says instead, nipping carefully at Stiles' lip when he feels long fingers coil tighter into the back of his shirt, “I could never get you alone to talk.” 

“We're not doing too much talking right now,” Stiles smiles into his mouth in a way that tells Derek he doesn't actually mind that one bit. 

Derek doesn't either. 

–

They do talk, eventually. Because moments are finite and fingers and lips can only communicate so much even to a person with werewolf level senses. 

They use somber, serious words like “trust” and “relationship” and “exclusive” but they both falter a bit when it comes to giving whatever this is a name. 

Before Derek kisses him goodnight (because, he realizes, he can do that now, he can do that whenever he wants) Stiles looks him square in the eye and says “I think maybe I've been falling for you for years.” 

Derek kisses him like it's everything. 

–

Stiles is always this sort of mix between intensity and hesitancy; he's all big hands and uncoordinated limbs. Graceless, but in that beautiful way that gracelessness can be effortlessness. It's what Derek finds so attractive about him, really, on more than just the physical level. But he has a tendency to rush - he rushes when he speaks and when he types and when he eats; treats everything like it has to be done on a chess clock and he's a couple moves behind. Derek doesn't really know where this got ingrained into him (probably around the same time that he learned that peoples lives can have expiration dates, when he'd heard the doctors tell his father that his mother only has 6 more months at best). 

Stiles rushes like he wants everything Derek has, every has had, ever will have. Like he wants all the bruised and battered parts of him too. It makes Derek's throat clench and his bones ache with a fondness he thought had been all but burned out of him (literally). 

Stiles rushes. 

He burns hot and bright and fast; burns like a coal fire that's been smoldering for years with no signs of stopping. Derek has to grab his wrists and hold them still sometimes, kiss him slow and careful and just remind him (and maybe himself, too) that they've got time. They've got as much time as they want and then some. That this is still new and fragile and maybe Derek is still a little scared. 

Maybe Derek is still trying to shake some of the ruin out of his life. 

But Stiles always stills, breathes in evenly and carefully and calms his heart rate; tells Derek he understands, he knows, he knows. And for the first time, Derek feels like he's hearing those words without the emptiness of pity or platitude. 

He feels safe.

–

Everything about Stiles is sharp edges and loud sounds and sometimes Derek just needs to wrap his arms around Stiles waist and bury his face in the crook of his neck and breathe him in, slow and sweet and calming because he can hear the clutter rattling around in Stiles' head even though that's absolutely impossible, even for a werewolf - and it makes Stiles still and breathe deep too. Eventually he'll start to run his hands through Derek's hair, over the base of his neck, and there's probably a dog joke in there somewhere, he thinks, but he lets it go. He lets it go in favor of letting the quiet settle comfortably around them.

–

“I think you're it for me. I think this is forever.” 

“I think you saved me. I don't think I could ever want anyone else.” 

\--

Sometimes Stiles will lay curled against him, flushed from nose to thigh, breathing slow and steady and content with his lips curled up at the corners. 

“You're perfect,” he'll whisper into Derek's chest, like it's easy, like it's simple, “you're gorgeous, you're perfect, I don't deserve you.” 

Sometimes it will become too much for Derek to hear, and he'll have to shut him up with his mouth or with his hands. Because words, words like that, they get caught on Derek's tongue. Words like that are never easy and he's tried so many times to say 'I love you' that it's beginning to sound like a foreign language in his head. 

But Stiles will laugh, like he always does, and say “I know, I know,” between the wet slide of Derek's tongue against his, like it's the most honest truth he knows, like it's never been a secret. 

And maybe some part of him will always be ruinous; will never be saved or salvaged. Maybe some part of Stiles will never settle. Maybe they will never find the grace or the peace they still won't admit they're looking for. But they'll go to sleep each night thinking about grace, about hope, about the soft steady beating of a heart that's not their own. 

Maybe even ruin can be beautiful when it's shared, splayed open, made raw. 

Maybe what they have is truth.


End file.
